Giles Snyder

Cicadas.  They finally made it to my neighborhood.  Then again, I guess they were always here, lurking for years just beneath the surface, waiting among the roots of trees in their untold numbers for their day in the sun - to shrug off their carapace, grow up, and keel over dead after having a few kids who will head back down to earth to start the cycle again.       The swarm that wrapped the stoop in a steady, buzz saw wall of sound this week weren't that evident when my wife and I left for a getaway to Asheville, North Carolina. But they clearly began emerging even as my wife happily made friends with the alpacas and goats that live next door to the tiny Airbnb house we had booked for the weekend. We also did some hiking in the mountains around Asheville, had lunch with my old friend Sheryl (a longtime Ashevillian) and toured the Biltmore Estate, a retreat for the 1% if there ever was one. Too much to take care of, if you ask me.  Our visit to Asheville was our first trip away fr

Here's something that shouldn't be remarkable but is  - being fully vaccinated means I get to resume my normal haircut schedule, butt in the barber chair every two weeks, or as near to payday as I can manage. A small victory after happily exposing myself to the credulity stretching possibility that the DEEP STATE is using the vaccination effort to implant some sort of tracking device in my left bicep. Why some shadowy government apparatchik would want to keep track of where I go and what I do is beyond me. And don't smart phones already do that anyway?  In any case, I'm boring.  A homebody, if you must know. Sedentary. I like watching Star Trek and writing stupid blog posts. I acknowledge the need for exercise long enough to walk Ornery Dog Jasper (ODJ) a couple of miles most days.  That's about it - my everyday pandemic life in a nutshell, unless you throw getting my hair cut in there as well. If I missed anything over this past year of social distancing, it's

Has it really been more than a month since I posted here? Either the stoop hasn't generated much news or I've been ... busy? That can't be right, unless you call binge watching my latest TV obsession "busy." In this case, I've been devouring "Sons of Anarchy," the motorcycle gang drama that takes inspiration from Shakespeare's "Hamlet."  The protagonist has some serious daddy issues.   "Sons" ran for seven seasons beginning in 2008. I was vaguely aware of it while it was on, but didn't watch it until now, probably because of the strange hours I keep working as a radio newsman.  The sacrifices I make to keep food on the table. Anyway, I just started season six, which seemed like as good a place as any to take a break and write a blog post about how the outlaw biker life has passed me by.  Honestly, I didn't even know being an outlaw biker was a viable option as a career path until I started watching "Sons." No